The ABLJ is proud to publish volume 99, issue 1, which is now available online. This issue is dedicated to the Honorable Terrence L. Michael, who served as Editor in Chief of the ABLJ from January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2024. In fact, the issue opens with my formal dedication, and note of sincerest gratitude, to Judge Michael. The issue then includes four fantastic articles discussing various aspects of the bankruptcy system, namely the potential implications of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bartenwerfer to individual bankruptcy cases involving coerced debt, the ownership and transfer of fraudulent transfer claims in bankruptcy cases, the possible creation of a comprehensive filing system for cryptocurrency, and an indepth study of the impact of parental obligations on the outcomes of individual bankruptcy cases.

Volume 99:1 truly includes something for everyone. I want to thank the associate editors and the authors for their tireless work on the articles and you, our readers, for your continued support of the ABLJ.  Please take a few moments to read the article abstracts (and perhaps the articles as well), and please join us for the next ABLJ Roundtable discussing liability management transactions and the Serta decision on May 29, 2025, at 1:00 p.m., ET.

Honorable Michelle M. Harner
United States Bankruptcy Judge, District of Maryland
Editor in Chief

IN THIS ISSUE

The Editor in Chief typically touches every aspect of the journal, makes the hard decisions, and receives little credit in real time. That all certainly is true of our immediate past Editor in Chief, the Honorable Terrence L. Michael, who was a tremendous leader and champion of the ABLJ. This dedication provides an overview of Judge Michael’s notable achievements and expresses our deep gratitude for his service. 

To read the article, click here.

Bankruptcy professionals may be surprised to learn that debt and domestic violence (DV) are connected. Professors Littwin, Adams, and Kennedy coined the term “coerced debt” to describe debt that the batterer in an abusive relationship incurs in the victim’s name using fraud or duress. The Supreme Court’s holding in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley that § 523(a)(2) can prevent the innocent spouse of someone who committed fraud from discharging debt implicates coerced debt because each coerced debt has two victims: the DV victim and the creditor. Bartenwerfer raised the possibility that creditors could prevent DV victims from discharging coerced debts due to fraud of which they were victims. Bartenwerfer v. Buckley & Coerced Debt analyzes Bartenwerfer and cases under the Nineteenth Century precedent the Court embraced to show that Bartenwerfer is much narrower than it appears. The underlying law of fraud controls, and in every case reviewed, the law of fraud requires that the spouses have a business relationship to transmit fraud liability. The professors also make the normative case that victims of coerced debt deserve discharge, illustrating their arguments with data on business debts from the first in-depth study of coerced debt.

To read the article, click here.

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In Alec Schwartz’s article The Practical Consequences of Metaphysics: Who Owns a Fraudulent-Transfer Claim in Bankruptcy?, Mr. Schwartz asserts that the courts and practitioners have reached a variety of conclusions to this question. He argues that § 544(b) has historically been taken out of context and that courts and practitioners have become oblivious to the history and purpose of fraudulent transfer statutes. Mr. Schwartz observes that the Bankruptcy Code does not address what happens to state law causes of action that belonged to creditors prepetition and then become a claim subject to the trustee’s control. He argues that there are four possible outcomes regarding the ownership of these claims. Mr. Schwartz evaluates the four possible outcomes and argues that anything less than the trustee’s full and preempting ownership of federal fraudulent-transfer claims would undermine Congressional intent and continue to confuse how fraudulent transfer claims should be asserted and adjudicated.

To read the article, click here.

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As crypto moves into the mainstream, isn’t it time to enhance the classification and treatment of investors in bankruptcy and embrace marginal transparency with a centralized filing system securing rights as  secured creditors? Read Securing the Rights of Cryptocreditors and consider this possibility.

To read the article, click here.

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Parenting is challenging, even without the added element of financial distress. In their article Parental Obligations in Bankruptcy, Belisa Pang and Katherine Fang utilize a new, unique data set to conduct a statistical analysis of the impact of parental obligations on debtors. Their research indicates that debtors with parental obligations are more than eight percentage points more likely to have a chapter 13 case dismissed than similarly situated non-parent debtors. Further, their research indicates that parental obligations do not impact all debtors equally—single female parents are over ten percentage points more likely to be dismissed than their single male parent counterparts. Utilizing multiple sophisticated regression analyses on their data, the article adds a unique and important empirical component to the scholarship examining the impact of dependents on chapter 13 cases.

To read the article, click here.

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